From The Hackathon: Advise.ly Provides Peer-To-Peer Career Advice On Demand

6 years

At the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon, a presentation on stage was very polished and caught our attention. Advise.ly provides peer-to-peer career advice on demand. It uses both the LinkedIn API and the Twilio API to first find people with the same career background and then initiate a phone call. The site is already live and working, which is impressive for a 24-hour hack.

First, you authenticate with your LinkedIn account and enter your phone number. It then uses your LinkedIn information to find close matches on the service of people who help you when you are at a turning point in your career. Then Twilio initiates a call. It’s as simple as that.

“We felt that this was a pinpoint and that there was an opportunity,” said John Milinovich, who works at Google and is part of the team. “We arrived here yesterday and we just focused on the execution,” he continued.

They don’t know what the next step is, but they are really excited by the opportunity they got here. Yet, they knew it would be a long and tiring night. But adrenaline makes up for the lack of sleep.

Parth Shah (VMWare), Uzair Ali (Box.net) and John Milinovich (Google) met at Yahoo where the three of them used to work. Andrew Look (Shopzilla) and Nathanael Smith (Perch) were members of the same fraternity at UCLA with Milinovich. When asked if they would take part in the Hackathon next year, the answer was “Absolutely, we count down the days.”